Islamic jurisprudence allowed a man to have sexual relations with a female slave (concubine) and her close blood relatives, such as her mother or daughter, with almost no real restriction. This stands in sharp contrast to the strict and permanent prohibitions that apply to free women.

Muwatta Imam Malik (Book 28, Hadith 17): Umar ibn al-Khattab was asked about a woman and her daughter who were both owned as slaves (“those whom your right hands possess”). The question was whether it is permissible for the owner to have intercourse with one after the other. Umar replied: “I dislike that both be joined together.”

This statement is generally understood by classical scholars to mean that having sexual relations with both the mother and daughter at the same time is disliked (makruh), but doing so one after the other is permissible.

In the Book of Marriage section of Muwatta Malik, Imam Malik himself explains: “A man who commits fornication with a woman and the hadd punishment is carried out on him may then marry her daughter, and his son may marry the woman herself if he wishes. This is because he had relations with her through haram (forbidden) means, and the prohibition that Allah has placed applies only to relations that occur through halal (lawful) intercourse or something resembling marriage.”

The Harsh Realities This Reveals:

• For free women, marrying or having sexual relations with a mother and her daughter (or a daughter and her mother) is an eternal and grave prohibition — a major sin under Islamic law.
• Yet when the women are slaves, the same act becomes either fully permissible or at most “disliked.” The blood relationship and the emotional bond between mother and daughter suddenly lose their moral weight simply because the women are enslaved.
• Justice should be based on humanity, not on legal status. Why does the same close blood relation that is strictly forbidden among free people become allowable when the women are “those whom your right hands possess”?
• Most disturbingly, the consent of the slave women is completely irrelevant in these rulings. They are treated purely as property. A man could sexually exploit both a mother and her daughter without their agreement, and the law offered them no protection.

This clear double standard shows that these rules were not rooted in universal moral principles or divine justice. Instead, they were designed to protect the property rights and sexual privileges of male slave owners in 7th-century Arabian society. An enslaved woman’s dignity, motherhood, and family bonds were subordinated to the owner’s desires.

The law essentially turned slave women and their daughters into sexual commodities, creating a legal loophole that free women were spared — but at the terrible cost of the enslaved women’s humanity.